Legacy
by legallyinsane93
Summary: Post 8x13 - Dean & Sam are on a mission to close the gates of Hell forever. However, a visitor from the future causes the brothers to question their decisions as the effects of their choices make themselves clear. As they delve into the mission ahead, they begin to wonder whether redemption is even possible for a Winchester, or if their only legacy will be one of blood and death.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: ONE AND ONLY! I do not own Supernatural. I'm only writing this for entertainment, and no copyright infringement is intended.**

**Title:** Legacy

**Summary:** Post "Everybody Hates Hitler"- Dean & Sam Winchester have spent their entire lives surrounded by the evil forces of the world, pushed and pulled and forced to bend in attempt to rid the world of demons and save a few lives. As such, they jump at the chance to close the gates of Hell, forever removing demons from the face of the Earth. However, a visitor from the future causes the brothers to question the decisions they make as the effects of ridding the world of demons begin to make themselves clear. Erica Winchester longs for the family she has lost and the innocence she once possessed, and so sends herself back to finish the job her family started and hopefully fix the future. As she delves into nigh-impossible trials, arcane rituals, and ancient magicks, however, she begins to wonder whether redemption is even possible. Perhaps, in the end, destiny truly cannot be avoided. Perhaps, for a Winchester, the only possible legacy to leave behind is one of blood and death.

**Note: **Events will primarily be based off of TV show canon, though it will be manipulated to fit my plan. Naturally, the addition of a new character will lead to a few divergences from the canon plotlines, but I will take care to maintain the tone and attitudes portrayed in the show, avoiding OOC occurrences as much as possible.

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**A/N:** Hello, and welcome to my Supernatural fanfic. This idea was born upon rewatching the Supernatural episodes involving time travel, and noticing how devastated characters seem to be when things don't turn out according to plan, such as Dean failing to stop Azazel in 'In the Beginning,' Mary's shock at learning her children were raised as Hunters, and Henry's frustration over Sam & Dean's ignorance concerning the Men of Letters. Those ponderings led to the thoughts of what would happen if someone from Sam & Dean's future were to come back and were nothing like what the brothers would expect. Thus, this storyline was born! I promise to keep this as un-cliche as possible, and hope you all will help keep me in line by letting me know what you like and what deserves adjusting. There is also a trailer for this, as well as a kind of introduction, on YouTube. Both links can be found at the bottom of my profile. I hope you will be willing to give it a chance, and will enjoy reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it! Please review and tell me what you think! :)

Lauren

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**Chapter One**

"Is this really necessary?"

Due to the fact that their lives rarely consisted of things that weren't crucial for the survival of humanity, such a phrase didn't exit a Winchester's mouth very often. Sam Winchester, however, felt the phrase was perfectly appropriate seeing as how he was currently helping his brother carry a new mattress into the bunker the brothers had adopted as a base of operations.

"Hell yeah, this is necessary!" Dean returned, grunting slightly as they maneuvered the mattress down the steps that led to the bunker's main living areas. "Dude, we can do whatever we want with this place! We've never had anything permanent like this before. It's—"

"Awesome," Sam finished. "Yeah, I know. But do we really have to play 'Extreme Makeover' right now? That vamp nest back in Oregon wiped me out. All I wanna do is get some sleep."

"Aw, come on, Sammy! It's one mattress!" Dean continued as Sam sent his customary glare in his brother's direction. "Look, once we finish this, you can sleep as long as you want. I promise I won't bug you. I might even let you borrow my new mattress!"

Sam simply raised an eyebrow at his older brother, having the sinking feeling it wouldn't be that easy to get some rest, before buckling down to the task before him. "Let's just get this done." If, by some miracle, his brother really would leave him alone long enough to take a nap, he wanted to get through this moving project as soon as possible. Several long minutes of silence, broken only by grunting, heavy breathing, and the occasional offer of direction, stretched between the brothers as they conveyed Dean's mattress into the room the older Winchester had chosen as his own, finally dropping it into place on the fifties era bedframe with a loud thud.

"Finally!" Dean cried, falling back onto his new mattress with a happy groan. "Sammy, I'm telling you, you should've gotten a mattress, too, while we were there."

Sam scoffed. "No, thanks. I'm good." He turned and made for the bedroom door with a shake of his head as Dean released a contented sigh and folded his hands behind his head. "I'm gonna grab a couple hours of sleep. Wake me up if you hear anything from Kevin." Sam tapped the threshold as he stepped through it, confirming Dean's muttered agreement, before stepping a few feet further down the narrow hallway to a door on the opposite side of the corridor from his elder brother's.

Letting himself into the familiar, sparsely decorated room he'd chosen as his own, though he didn't have the desire to fully customize the space as Dean seemed to, Sam crossed the room in long strides, coming to the side of the double bed dominating the space. With an exhausted huff, he allowed gravity to pull him down to collapse on the firm mattress, not bothering to undress or even kick off his boots before snuggling his pillow close and drifting off into dreamland.

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Sam wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep when he found himself suddenly wide awake, a loud crash having reverberated through the Men of Letters bunker and pulled him from his nap. "What the Hell?" he muttered, bolting to his feet and crossing to the door in quick strides. Opening the door only served to bring him face-to-face with his brother, causing Sam to take a step back to avoid a collision with the elder Winchester.

"Was that you?" Dean demanded as Sam rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

"No? I thought maybe it was you…"

The brothers shared a glance before surging as one toward the main areas of the bunker, from which the sound had echoed through the halls. "No one can get in here without a key, right?" Dean asked, pulling his pistol from the waistband of his jeans as the brothers moved.

Sam nodded, ignoring the fact that Dean couldn't see him from a few paces ahead. "That's what Larry said." Sam thought back to his disasterous visit with the Men of Letters elder several weeks before. "He said this place was warded. Nothing gets in except through the door."

"And we're the only ones with a key." Dean clicked the safety off on his pistol as Sam slipped a switchblade from the back pocket of his jeans, both falling silent as they reached the threshold into the Men of Letters control room and library.

"What the hell?" Sam broke the silence that had fallen with an appalled whisper as his mind processed the sight before him.

A large portion of the Men of Letters library lay in shambles, as if a tornado had torn through the middle of the room at high speed. One of the tables dominating the middle of the room had been overturned, oddly enough to stand on one of its short sides, its matching chairs scattered around it turned at every which angle. Books and loose papers littered the floor from where they'd been evicted from their homes on the bookshelves, which had been tipped over where they came into contact with whatever had torn through the room. Oddly enough, the damage ended at the edge of a peculiar circle that seemed scorched into the floor. Inside the boundary, everything was chaos, but the shelves that edged the markings hadn't moved an inch.

"This wasn't here before."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious."

Sam crouched down at the boundary enclosing the destruction, choosing to ignore his brother's rebuttal as he ran a finger across the thick black line that now resided on the floor. Seeing a black residue clinging to his finger, Sam brought his hand up, giving the intruding residue a sniff before standing and rubbing the remains between his fingers. "It's ash," he revealed to his brother, who was currently levelling his pistol with the strange etchings as if they intended to attack.

"Ash?" The elder Winchester repeated, cocking an eyebrow at his brother. "What kind of fire tosses bookshelves and tables around like they're nothing and burns in exact shapes without leaving any damage?"

"I dunno." Sam's brow furrowed as he stepped across the circle boundary, noticing strange symbols scorched in intervals around the ring, which enclosed two more circles of sigils, laid out like a multi-layered, mystic clock face. There were no signs that a fire had ever been born in the room aside from the scorched floor; neither burn marks nor smoke lingered in the library. As he maneuvered around pages scattered from a book of which the bindings had broken upon contact with the floor, Sam struggled with the fact that he didn't recognize the design or any of the symbols from any spell book he'd ever studied. His eyes on a continuous sweep as he surveyed the damage and catalogued the diverse ciphers etched into the hardwood floors, the younger Winchester pressed further into the debris, edging around the upturned table's legs which protruded from the table's underbelly like urchin spines, until catching sight of something that stopped him cold. "Dean?!"

As his brother crossed quickly toward him, Sam fought to process the image before him. A figure, seemingly unconcious, lay propped against the top of the upturned table where it now laid on one edge in the center of the three rings of sigils. Categorizing the form as distinctly female and human, dark hair and clothes pronouncing a pale, angular face possessing a full, pouting mouth and finely-shaped nose that currently had what seemed to be blood oozing from one nostril, Sam could do nothing but share his brother's confused and wondrous expression as the shorter Winchester came to an abrupt halt beside his brother.

"What the hell?!" Dean echoed his brother's earlier sentiment as he saw his brother's discovery, immediately levelling his pistol in the unconcious figure's direction. "You think demon?"

"No way," Sam countered. "The wards on this place would've fried it before it got within a hundred meters of the door. Angel?"

"Don't angels usually go for the business look?" It was true. The angels the Winchester brothers encounted typically looked like they would be more at home in a law firm or executive office than on the frontlines of a supernatural war. This figure, on the other hand, was clad in a strange mix of catsuit and body armour that contoured her form perfectly, leaving only her hands, neck, and face unconcealed by the jet black outfit.

"What, then?" Sam wondered. "Anything else that wanted in here would need the key, and we're the only ones who have one."

"One way to find out." Dean adopted that determined gaze Sam was so familiar with as he clicked the safety off on his pistol and cocked the hammer. "Hey!" he barked suddenly, roughly nudging the woman's leg as Sam tighted his grip on his switchblade. "Hey, you!"

The unconcious figure quickly started, blinking up at the brothers with a mixture of surprise and confusion as she struggled to focus, running a finger under her nose and noticing the blood. She recovered quickly, however, lashing out and swiping Dean's legs from under him before regaining her feet with startling speed. Noticing how their unwelcome guest wavered slightly as she squared off against the taller Winchester even as she fixed him with an intense stare that was somehow familiar, Sam saw his opening and quickly lashed out, intending to catch the intruder with a left hook followed by a slash with the knife clutched tight in his right hand. His eyes widened in astonishment, however, when she easily dodged, catching him in a counter that sent him slamming into one of the shelves that had managed to avoid being toppled minutes before, knocking it to the ground in a loud mess of books and artifacts.

A shot abruptly rang out, and the intruder fell to a crouch where she's stood with a cry of pain, clutching her right shoulder. A few paces away, Dean climbed to his feet, keeping his pistol levelled on the woman before stepping as close as he dared. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded, lining his pistol's sights between the intruder's intensely furrowed brows and keeping his finger close to the trigger as she glared up at him with decidedly green eyes.

It was then that Dean made the mistake of averting the smallest degree of his attention from the woman before him to his stunned brother, who jolted awake and immediately began struggling to remove himself from the tangle of furniture and paranormal paraphenalia he'd been thrown into. Faster than lightening, the bunker's unwelcome guest stood, sending a knife sailing through the air in a streak of silver to knock the pistol in Dean's hands off course so that his shot flew far to her right without endangering anyone. Before Dean had the chance to return his pistol to its original course, the woman had closed the distance between them, wrenching the gun from his hands in a flurry of movement that ended with a solid connection between her knee and his torso that forced him to slam bodily into the upturned table at his back. Dean readied himself for a charge as the woman stalked toward him slowly, but his own pistol aimed between his eyes had him rethinking such a plan.

Dean focused instead on the assessing gaze the woman was currently giving him from the safe side of his gun barrel, her expression twisting into one of deep concentration. Hope swirled in Dean's chest that the intruder was too focused on him to sense Sam creeping behind the intruder across the peculiar circles, but his hopes were dashed as the woman glanced over her shoulder, fixing her attention on Sam and barking a single syllable: stop. Just as soon as she uttered the word, it was as if Sam had turned to stone, his body going rigid as the two sigils his feet had been on flared to life in a flash of silver light.

"What did you do to him?!" Dean demanded, instantly surging forward once again, which only served to have the woman block the punch he threw at her and wrench his arm behind his back to drive him face-first against the upturned table. Dean growled, struggling to ignore the pain burning in his shoulder. "I swear, if you hurt my brother, I'll"—

"You are Dean Winchester, yes?" The woman seemed to ignore Dean's unfinished threat in favor of her own line of questioning, releasing Dean's arm but controlling his movement as he spun to face her. Keeping his pistol in a loose grip at her right side, she brought her left forearm up to press at the base of Dean's throat, ensuring he wouldn't be going anywhere as she blocked his body with her own.

"What the hell did you do to my brother?!" Dean repeated in a raging bellow, feeling a sickness at being forced to submit to a woman nearly half a foot shorter than him that he probably had a solid fifty pounds on. The woman before him, however, seemed unconcerned, casting a glance back at Sam's frozen form before returning her attention to the elder Winchester.

"He is perfectly fine. It's a simple stopping spell. He can still see and hear everything that is going on. He just can't move. I will release him as soon as we clear up this misadventure." The woman maintained a matter-of-fact tone, effectively masking the air of lethality she possessed. "Now, are you Dean Winchester?"

"Yes," Dean replied, keeping an eye on his brother.

"Good." The woman gave Dean a strange smirk, suddenly releasing him and taking several steps back out of his reach. Dean kept a wary eye on her and his pistol, which she now held in both hands, studying the pearl-inlaid grip with a keen eye. Glancing up and noticing the elder Winchester's careful movements and watching gaze, she sighed. "Relax. If I wanted you dead, you'd already be on the floor."

"Easy to say when you've got the gun."

"Please." The woman scoffed. "Guns are loud and messy. If I were to make you a target, I'd dispatch you in a much more graceful manner. Besides, you initiated this confrontation."

"Who the hell are you?" Dean chose not to argue over the beginnings of this disaster, his frustration building at the woman's casual tone. "And how did you get in here?"

"Who I am is a bit harder to explain." The woman shrugged, her green eyes darting up and to the left in time with her shoulders' movement before they returned to match Dean's. "As to how I got in here…well, a good magician never reveals their secrets."

"Bullshit," Dean declared. "The only way you can get in here is a key, and I have the only one."

"A key? You mean like this one?"

Dean froze as the intruder reached into a hidden pocket of her outfit, pulling out a familiar golden box. It seemed considerably more worn than the one he knew to be currently sitting on his nightstand, but the woman dismantling it to pull out the same black key confirmed what he thought to be impossible. "Where did you get that?!" he demanded.

"My brother left it to me," the woman began, returning the box to its original state and depositing it in its pocket. "He found it with belongings left to us by our father, who received the box from his grandfather."

"How is that possible? We were told there was only one box."

"What year is it?"

Dean floundered for a moment. "Twenty-thirteen," he finally stated. "Why does that matter?"

"Trust me, it matters more than you know," the woman declared before sighing. "Let's call this even. Promise you won't try to kill me again, and I'll release your brother and explain what I can." Dean nodded, and instantly Sam was moving, crossing quickly to his brother's side and frantically checking to make sure the elder Winchester was okay despite his brother's protests.

Once the taller Winchester was fully satisfied his brother wasn't too badly harmed, the intruder quickly took several steps back as Sam whirled on her, another knife pulled from the confines of his jacket and held at the ready. "I didn't promise anything," he growled. "So I suggest you explain fast."

"Fine," the woman began with an exasperated sigh that implied she'd at least somewhat expected such treatment. "Ten years from now, you both die. And because of that, hundreds of millions of other people die."

"And how do you know that?" Dean's voice was the one that carried through the room, but both brothers had their eyes glued on the figure before them, mentally calculating every word and gesture of the intruder to pick up the slightest trace of deceit.

"Because I'm here to keep it from happening." Both brothers froze, their eyes glued to the lithe figure before them as their unwelcome guest continued. "I'm from the year twenty-forty-three. My name is Erica Winchester." The woman's eyes fell on Dean, and he fought the urge to squirm under that intense scrutiny, but completely lost that impulse as the woman revealed she wasn't finished dropping bombs on the brothers. "My father's name was Dean Winchester."

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**A/N: **Thank you soo much for reading! Please review! :)

Lauren


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Here we are for part two of Legacy! Thank you so much to Amidst The Wild Wolves, Catherine. alice, Dulcinea54, and sobreyra274 for the favorites, follows, and reviews on the last chapter! I know it can be difficult leaving a review for a story after only the first few chapters, but it would really help just to know if this story is generating any interest, so if you read, I ask that you please leave even just a quick review. They truly do make my day and make me that much more eager to continue working on a story. Not a whole lot happens in this chapter, and it's much more dialogue-driven than I would prefer, but I felt it was important to build up a bit of background early on. I hope I managed to characterize the brothers correctly (particularly Dean. For a character that is so consistent, he can be a tricky devil to pin down.) and keep them believable, and hope you all will let me know if I failed at that task. Thanks again for reading! :)

Lauren

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**Chapter Two**

"Holy Hell." Sam's exclamation was quiet, full of realization as his mind automatically began to snap together similarities between the woman standing a few paces away and the older brother standing at his side: the same full mouth and green eyes; similar tall, lean builds; the same intense stare. Plus, she'd already revealed she had the key to their bunker, and how could she have that unless she'd brought it from her own time?

Oh, no. No, no, no, no," Dean repeated, recognizing the look on his brother's face as Sam lowered the knife in his hand. "Sam, she's gotta be lying! I don't have any kids!"

"Not yet, you don't. But thirty years in the future…who knows?"

"No, Sam. She's a-a demon, or a shapeshifter, or something." Dean immediately rejected Sam's reasoning, firmly shaking his head even as Sam continued.

"I don't think so. Dean, we've time-traveled before…more than once!"

"That doesn't mean"—

"Excuse me." Both brothers paused, looking over at Erica, arms crossed over her chest as she cut Dean off. "Is it common in this time to speak as if the person you're talking about isn't present?"

"Look," Sam began, putting his knife away and stepping closer to Erica even as Dean sighed loudly and rolled his eyes. "We just need to do a couple tests to make sure you're telling the truth."

"Of course," Erica returned instantly. "What do I need to do?"

"First, I want my gun back," Dean said before Sam could answer. "And then we need you to take a swig of this."

"Alright?" Erica's face was full of doubt as she traded Dean's pistol for the flask he'd pulled from an inner pocket of his jacket, but she removed the cap from the container anyway, keeping an eye on Dean and the pistol he kept aimed in her direction as she tipped the bottle back and took a heavy swig. Suddenly, she was coughing, choking, and sputtering, bent over at the waist as she struggled to breathe. "What was that?!" she demanded. "It's horrible!"

Confused, Sam took the flask from Erica as she continued coughing, giving it a suspicious sniff. "Dean," he began, turning to his brother with a look of annoyed disbelief as he held up the bottle. "This is your whiskey flask."

"Oh, sorry," Dean said, returning the flask to his jacket pocket and pulling a matching one out of the opposite side of his jacket, handing it over to Erica with a self-satisfied shrug. "Proves you can't be my kid, though, if you can't even handle one shot of liquor."

"Liquor?" Erica quoted, taking the second container with more caution than the first. "How is alcohol supposed to tell you if I'm human or not?"

"It isn't," Sam cut in before Dean could answer, keeping that annoyed stare on his brother. "Dean's just an ass."

"So what's in this one?"

"Holy water and salt," Sam reported honestly. "It won't hurt you unless you're a demon. Tastes awful, though."

"Thanks for the warning," Erica replied, taking a gulp from the flask and showing no adverse effects, aside from a quite sour face. "Any other tests?"

"Just one." Sam pulled a different knife from his jeans pocket, noticing Erica tensing up at the sight of the blade. "This knife is made of silver. I just need a tiny cut to know you aren't a werewolf or shapeshifter or something else we don't want to be friends with."

"Shouldn't you know that?" Dean speculated, watching with near disappointment as Sam ran his knife over the back of Erica's hand with no sign of burning or pain. "Aren't you a hunter?"

"Not exactly," Erica replied as Sam simultaneously declared her fully human, causing Dean to release the hammer on his pistol. "I'm kind of new to the supernatural."

"Then where did you learn to fight like that?" Sam asked as he put his knife away, allowing Erica to pull her sleeve over the seeping red line of blood on her hand.

'I'm in the military," Erica revealed, catching both brothers' attention. "Hand-to-hand combat was part of my initial training."

"The military?" Sam repeated, sharing a glance with his brother. "Really?"

"Five years of military service are required for all American citizens upon reaching the age of sixteen in my time. I, however, chose to turn it into a career."

"Well, that explains why you aren't too concerned about that bullet in your shoulder," Sam quipped, noticing the glossy sheen of blood on the woman's shoulder. "Come on, let's get that cleaned up."

"I still don't know about this," Dean said, disbelief in his tone as he followed Sam and Erica through the bunker and to the kitchen. "Just 'cuz she's human doesn't mean she isn't lying."

The Men of Letters kitchen was quite large, which made sense considering Sam and Dean's exploration of the place had revealed enough beds to house at least twenty-five people. Black counters broke the mass of white cabinets both on the wall and floor that ran the length of two full walls and part of a third and fourth, broken by two fifties-era stoves and a large, restaurant-style wash area with three sinks. Two refrigerators flanked the cabinets at their ends on the third and fourth walls, on which also resided two swinging doors, one through which Dean, Sam, and Erica walked, and the other through which could be found a large dining area. A coordinating island with a built-in butcher's block and two barstools took up the middle of the kitchen, and it was to this that Sam guestured Erica.

"What do you wanna do, Dean?" Sam argued as he began searching through the kitchen for where he'd stashed the brothers' medical supplies. "Call Cas and have him do some kind of angel paternity test?! Dean!" Exasperation was evident in Sam's voice as he caught his brother eyeing Erica with a thoughtful look on his face. "He hasn't been answering. You know that as well as I do. What makes you think he'll answer now?"

"Cuz this is important," Dean insisted. "Besides, time travel is kinda an angel thing anyway. He should know what G.I. Jane is doing here." Sam sighed as Dean closed his eyes. "Castiel, you feathery bastard," the elder Winchester began, "I don't know why you haven't been answering, but we've got a bit of a situation down here, so if you could take just a second to clear some things up for us, it's kind of important."

"Told you, Dean," Sam said after a moment in which there was no fluttering of angel wings or appearance of a man in a trenchcoat. "Who knows what he's doing, but whatever it is, he doesn't answer."

"Who are Jane and Castiel?" Dean opened his eyes to find Erica looking at Sam from her perch on the island, confusion written all over her face, with Sam at a loss for how to to answer as he deposited the medical kit beside Erica. He might have found the situation comical if it weren't all so frustrating.

"You don't know about hunting," Dean huffed angrily. "You don't know who Castiel is. How do you expect us to believe we're related? I mean, do you even know anything about us?!"

"I know your name is Dean Joseph Winchester." Erica kept her attention locked on Dean even as Sam told her that her outfit was in the way of him being able to fix her shoulder, keeping her eyes fixed on Dean's matching pair even as her hands moved to straps and buckles at her sides. "You were born on January twenty-fourth of the year nineteen-seventy-nine in Lawrence, Kansas. We used to listen to Led Zepplin before all of my baseball games and afterward, win or lose, you'd take me out for milkshakes."

Erica paused long enough to pull a chestplate-like piece away from her uniform and toss it aside before pulling the long-sleeved shirt over her head and placing it to the side as well, leaving her in what was cut like a matching black singlet. "His name is Samuel Ray Winchester." She gestured to Sam, who was studying her blood-soaked shoulder. "He was born May second of nineteen-eighty-three. He used to help me with my homework and let me ride on his shoulders since he was so tall, and you used to laugh at the fact that I called him Uncle Sam. I'm still not sure why it was considered amusing."

Dean shot his brother a look that could almost be a glare as Sam chuckled. "What?" Sam returned with a shrug. "It does sound like us…future us, I mean." Seeing that Dean remained unamused, Sam quickly returned his attention to the blood-caked shoulder in front of him.

"Maybe," Dean muttered, seeing Sam's point. He turned his attention to the woman residing on the kitchen counter. "But why didn't we ever tell you about hunting?"

"Because"— Erica cut herself off with a loud yelp, bringing her uninjured arm up to bite into the flesh of her hand at the base of her thumb, her whole body going rigid as she fixed Sam with a deathly glare to rival Dean on his best day.

"Sorry, sorry," Sam held his hands up in surrender as he apologized for how he'd just pressed down all around the bullet wound in Erica's shoulder. "I just had to be sure the bullet didn't shatter," he explained. "Whatever your uniform is made of, it was effective in slowing the bullet down. The round stayed shallow, so I won't have to do too much digging."

"Yay," Erica deadpanned with a roll of her eyes as Sam moved over to turn on one of the gas stoves in order to sterilize the equipment he planned on using. She then turned her attention back to Dean. "When I was seven, you both left and never came back."

Dean froze. The statement had left Erica's mouth as just that, a statement. There was no accusatory tone, no glare, no lost puppy pout. She could just as easily been remarking on the weather. Dean shared a glance with his brother as the younger Winchester returned with his handful of sterilized equipment. If he was happy with a family, what had been important enough to cause him and Sam to just walk out on all of that—and dangerous enough that they'd never returned? "I'm sorry," Dean finally bit out, still struggling to sort through and process Erica's words.

"Don't be," Erica returned easily. "You haven't done it yet. And, if I have my way, you never will."

"I've gotta get this bullet out," Sam cut in as he set down his tools and picked up a bottle of peroxide and a towel, giving Erica an apologetic glance. "This isn't gonna be a picnic."

"Here," Dean cut in, crossing over to the island as Erica nodded and seemed to steel herself.

"More holy water?" Erica asked dubiously as Dean once again pulled a flask from his jacket pocket. Sam paused, noticing Dean's offer and knowing he meant it as a silent truce.

"No, more whiskey," Dean informed with a chuckle as he offered up the flask. "It'll help dull the pain."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Erica returned, pushing the flask away with a gentle hand. "I've had worse. I can handle it."

"Suit yourself." Dean returned the flask to his pocket and planted himself on a barstool beside Erica, figuring, if nothing else, he could try and keep Erica's mind occupied while Sam worked. "So, no liquor, huh?"

"True alcoholic drinks are extremely rare in my time," Erica revealed, cutting off with a hiss as Sam poured a liberal amount of peroxide into and around the hole in her shoulder. Dean noticed the muscles flexing in her jaw before she managed to relax and continue. "Some citizens make their own liquor, but it is illegal for military personnel to consume any kind of alcohol, regardless of the occasion."

"Illegal?!" Dean parroted. "How old are you?"

"I just turned twenty-seven." Erica's brow drew together in confusion. "Why?"

"You're twenty-seven and have never had so much as a single drop of alcohol? Sounds to me like you come from a terrible place."

"What do you expect?" Erica growled as Sam finished sterilizing the wound in her shoulder, swapping out the peroxide and now blood-soaked towel for a pair of tweezers. "Demons are running everything."

Sam paused in his work, sharing a perplexed look with Dean before continuing as Dean strived to keep Erica talking. "Demons? How? Where are the hunters?"

"Dead." Erica's voice held no emotion as she looked straight ahead, no sadness or despair. It was as if she were simply reciting cold facts from a history book. "The demons systematically took out every hunter before plunging the world into war. When you found out all of the hunters were being slaughtered, you both went to put a stop to it." Erica trailed off with a quiet groan as Sam worked at pulling Dean's bullet from her shoulder.

"And never came back," Dean concluded, causing Erica to nod even as she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. "World domination with no chance of opposition. Doesn't seem like the demons' usual gig. They're selfish; they typically go for chaos and mayhem on a smaller, personal scale."

"Perhaps in this time." Erica sighed as Sam finally removed his tweezers from the hole in her shoulder, a victorious look on his face as he eyed the bullet clamped between the tweezers' legs. "In my time, they've banded together, wreaking havok and working together to cause as much destruction as possible. The death toll is in the billions."

"But how?" Sam inquired, setting the bullet off to the side and exchanging the tweezers for a needle and some thread. "We're figuring out how to close the gates of Hell forever. We're sealing it off so the demons are gone! And what about the angels?!"

"I don't know," Erica said. "I don't have all the answers. Six months ago, I didn't even know demons existed. It took weeks of research just to piece together what I do know, which is that you didn't manage to close off Hell and, for whatever reason, the angels aren't helping the humans out any." Erica leaned over and picked up the bullet Sam had pulled from her shoulder. "Can I have this?"

"Why?" Sam's brow furrowed as he fixed a skeptic look on the woman before him.

"I like to keep things that came close to killing me," Erica revealed, her eyes never leaving the bullet in between her fingers. "It keeps me sharp."

"And will that be part of a large collection?" Dean asked with a mix of curiosity and mystification.

Erica sent a gratified grin and a wink Dean's way. "No one over labelled the military a safe career choice."

"Right," Dean shook his head, offset by the woman before him, before getting the conversation back on topic. "If angels aren't helping anyone out, how'd you get here?"

"A spell," Erica stated simply as she slipped the bullet into a pocket of her pants, continuing at Sam and Dean's suspicious looks. "I've spent the past six months in this bunker, digging through the lot and trying to piece together everything that has happened. I stumbled across a spell for jumping to another time, and used it to come back here to where it all started. I'm here to help you close the gates of Hell."

"Okay, I get that you want to help," Sam said after a heavy moment of silence as he finished off the sutures closing Erica's wound. "But what do you mean 'where it all started'?"

"Where everything began to twist into my world." Erica spoke as though the answer should've been obvious, but quickly noticed she'd done nothing but confused the brothers before her. "Let's see….what's the best way to explain this?" Erica visually searched the kitchen, her eyes finally settling on the medical kit Sam was using. "Sam, hand me thread, scissors, and tape out of that kit."

Uncertain as to Erica's intentions, Sam dug the requested items from the bag and gave them to Erica, who immediately set to work snipping thread and knotting pieces of it together, ignoring the other two Winchesters in the room even as Sam bandaged her shoulder. "What are you doing?" Dean finally asked after several long minutes had passed of him and Sam passing glances over Erica's head, each wondering what she was up to.

"Just trust me," Erica declared, finally looking up with what seemed to be a nest interwoven in her hands, which she then laid out on the counter and taped in place after she'd hopped down with Sam's okay.

"What is this supposed to be?" Sam surveyed the laid out mixture of threads with a blend of curiosity and doubt as he gathered the medical kit back together.

"A basic visual of time-travel theory as I understand it," Erica said, again as if it were the most simple thing in the world. "See this knot?" She pointed to a large knot in the center of the picture, from which one strand of thread stretched on one side and what seemed to be hundreds stretched out on the other, all entwined within themselves. "This knot is where we are now in this precise moment." She moved her finger over to the single thread stretching from the knot as Sam and Dean both nodded. "This thread is the path you took to get here…all the moments and decisions that got you where you are now." She moved over to the interlocking web as Sam and Dean again nodded. "And all these loose threads? Shooting in and out and twisting with each other? Those are the paths your life can take based on the different decisions you make in the future. You with me so far?"

Sam and Dean once again both nodded, and so Erica continued, tracing a path from the large knot through the web of thread as she spoke. "Each decision leads to another and another. But, once you make a decision that sets you on a certain path…usually a big decision such as choosing to close the gates of Hell…" Erica took the scissors and snipped away a huge portion of the mesh, balling up the thread and setting it aside. "…all of the possibilities of your life that have no way of stemming from the choice you've made disappear. Gone. But, all these other choices and paths still exist."

"Like separate dimensions," Sam established.

"You can look at it like that if you like," Erica confirmed before pointing out a thread that wove through every thread path still available. "There are some threads of choice that weave through multiple paths. Some even twist with all paths. These are things that are meant to happen regardless of other decisions. No matter what you want to do to avoid that path, it will happen eventually."

"Like us being meant to be born," Dean added, locking gazes with his brother.

"Sure," Erica agreed. "Now, from what I know of angels, they have the power to manipulate these dimensions, setting up any universe they wish, whether it be past, present, or future. As a human, there's no spell anywhere near that powerful. I can't, for example, send myself to another dimension in which you succeeded in closing Hell & I grew up completely oblivious to demons' existence. I can only manipulate the timeline I originate from. And so, here I am. At the cusp of where everything begins to twist into the path that led to my world. I'm here to help make sure you succeed in shutting down Hell."

"So, you're our own personal Terminator," Dean decided, "sent back to make sure we don't die and cause the end of the world?"

"What's a Terminator?"

"So," Sam cut in before Erica's lost expression colliding with Dean's look of disbelief resulted in a problem. "If you somehow manage to change the future, wouldn't your thread disappear? What happens to you then?"

"My world stems from your failure to close off Hell," Erica began, returning her attention to the web on the counter. "The threads that lead to my world would no longer be active if you managed to lock the demons up forever. When that happens, I believe I would simply cease to exist, seeing as how I would never have been born and thus never have come back to this time." Erica looked up at Sam. "No one can be certain as to what will happen, though. It's not as if this has ever been attempted before."

"So you don't even know if this will work?!" Sam asked, shocked.

"There's no proof it won't," Erica reasoned with a shrug.

"There's no proof it will, either!" Sam cried. "Isn't that kind of reckless? You don't know what will happen to you!"

"It's a logical theory."

"It's a logical theory that we're related to monkeys," Dean cut in easily. "But you don't see us having a family reunion at the nearest zoo, now do you?"

"The idea that humans are related to monkeys is an absurd twentieth century notion that was disproved in twenty-eighteen with the excavation of the Hasankeyf caves in Turkey," Erica stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

"The what?" Sam asked, his tone matching Dean's baffled expression.

"It doesn't matter," Erica declared with a shake of her head, keeping her stern tone and expression. "I've been left with very few options. This was the best course of action I could take and I took it."

"Let me get this straight," Dean began, his mind reeling as he processed how everything had shifted over the past hour. "You come here using a time travel spell and tell us you're my kid, just so we can change everything so that you're never born?"

"If me never being born can stop demons from taking over the world and destroying it, then yes, that is exactly what I wish to do. If my research served me right, it wouldn't be the first time you've altered the future."

"Yeah, but that was the Apocalypse!"

"If you could see my world, I assure you that you would declare it an apocalypse," Erica said, fixing a resolute gaze on each of the Winchesters before her. "I plan to do this with or without your help. Your knowledge and skill set would simply help me reach my goal faster. If you do not wish to help, please just tell me and I'll be on my way."

Sam looked to his brother with a shrug. "We've already changed the future once," he reasoned. "And a demon-ruled world definitely seems like something worth changing. What'll it hurt to try again?"

Erica watched Dean, who seemed thoughtful as he glanced between Erica and Sam before matching his brother's shrug. "What the hell? I'm in."

* * *

**NOTES:** So, there is a ton of fan speculation over Sam & Dean's middle names and whether or not they even have middle names. So, just for some clarification, I chose their middle names based on the following:

A.) I can't remember which episode, I believe it was 'Playthings' from Season 2, but in one episode of Supernatural I could swear I saw a shot of a computer screen as Dean checked into the hotel that said 'Dean J.' and whatever last name they were using in their card scams at the time. I could've been hallucinating or whatever, but I decided to stick to that for this story and came up with Joseph.

B.) At first, I figured since Sam & Dean's first names came from Mary's parents, their middle names should come from John's parents, and was therefore going to make Sam's middle name Henry. After rewatching Season Eight's 'As Time Goes By,' however, I caught the bit where Sam & Dean discuss how John hated his father for running out on his family, and figured he wouldn't have his son named after him. So, I picked Ray. It's a nice, sensible, common enough middle name. Plus, it's my brother's middle name, and he's also a Supernatural fan, so it's a bit of personal dedication to him. :)

For the record, I've named Henry's wife Josephine, which was a fairly common name in the time she would've been born, since her name hasn't been mentioned on the show. Poor Dean, being such a tough guy but getting named after the women. :P

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**A/N:** Thanks for reading! Please review!

Lauren


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